From Jim Steele

To counteract the undeniable fact that CO2 infrared only penetrates a few microns into the ocean surface, and then is immediately radiated away creating a cool skin surface layer, climate alarmists always refer to a horribly biased conclusion in the 2018 Wong & Minnett paper (hereafter W&M) The Response of the Ocean Thermal Skin Layer to Variations in Incident Infrared Radiation.

The data in their paper was excellent as they engaged in an ocean survey with the only equipment that can accurately measure incoming and outgoing infrared at the ocean surface. But their conclusion was HORRIFIC.

W&M’s conclusion was biased by their intent to prove CO2 infrared could warm the ocean, a mechanism that no other climate scientist had yet to provide to support the global warming crisis narratives.

W&M correctly stated “direction of flow of heat is almost always from the ocean to the atmosphere meaning that the surface temperature is cooler than the temperature below the TSL.” (see upper graphic) TSL refers to what researchers elsewhere call the “cool skin layer”. Ocean heat can only ventilate from that cool skin layer.

While absorbed infrared can radiate away immediately, any absorbed solar heat in subsurface waters must rise to the cool skin layer to ventilate. That requires a longer time. Thus, there is always a temperature gradient from the warm subsurface to cool skin layer where solar heated ocean water then ventilates.

W&M compared outgoing infrared cooling under clear and cloudy skies and determined they were equal under both conditions. However, because cloudy skies increased the downward infrared by 40 W/m2, W&M concluded:

‘increasing infrared warmed the cool skin surface layer which reduced the temperature gradient that controlled the rate of subsurface heat conducting to the skin layer and thus trapped subsurface heat and warmed the oceans.’

That hypothetical conclusion thrilled alarmist scientists whose careers and funding depend on maintaining a crisis narrative, as well as thrilling brainwashed internet ClimateDopes that never engage in critical thinking.

However, W&M’s own data show that clouds had also reduced temperature gradient by reducing solar heating of the subsurface waters. Reduced solar heat counter balanced increased infrared.

Although every climate scientist knows oceans warm in the summer and cool in the winter, to push the global warming narrative, W&M assumed any solar heat had ventilated during the night, so they never mentioned the reduced solar heating by clouds had reduced the gradient even though they show it in their graphs.

Subsurface heat was not being trapped by the clouds’ added infrared energy, B, so outgoing infrared remained the same under both conditions.

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